Credit where credit is due

By THE ANCHORAGE DAILY PLANET

While the government-first crowd mewls over Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s budget cuts – which, by the way, still leave the state more than $700 million in the red -they should take a moment to blast the real culprits, spendthrift lawmakers.

Over the years, they put drunken sailors to shame when it came to spending money. They never saw a dollar they did not want to throw at something – anything..

They ran multibillion-dollar deficits. They blew hundreds of millions of dollars on mega-projects that went belly-up. They funded unnecessary programs. Since fiscal 2013 alone, they spent $16 billion more than the state took in. They drained state savings accounts to close those gaps.

Even as state oil revenue was drying up, they spent. But now the jig is up. A grownup finally has said “no more.”

If Dunleavy had not ripped the Band-Aid off the state’s budget gap, this batch of legislators would have continued the merry spending spree.

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Suzanne Downing had careers in business and journalism before serving as the Director of Faith and Community-based Initiatives for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and returning to Alaska to serve as speechwriter for Gov. Sean Parnell. Born on the Oregon coast, she moved to Alaska in 1969.